A conference call is a telephone call in which more than two parties participate in the call. The conference call may be designed to allow a called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that a called party may only listen into the call and is unable to contribute audio to the call. When a plurality of participants are allowed to participate in the call, the conference platform receives a plurality of audio streams from the conference participants, mixes these streams, and transmits the mixed audio streams back to the participants.
Conference calls may be designed so that the calling party, or conference originator, calls other participants and adds them to the call. In other systems, participants are able to call into the conference call themselves, e.g., by dialing into a conference bridge, by using a special telephone number set up for that purpose, or by other mechanisms.
Most companies use a specialized service provider for conference calls. These service providers maintain the conference bridge, and provide the phone numbers used to access the meeting or conference call.
Various conference call features may be activated by one or more conference participants during a conference call. For example, a mute feature may be activated to prohibit transmission of audio into the conference call by the muted participant. A lock control may be activated to prohibit additional participants from joining the conference call. A roll call control may be activated that transmits an audible roll call of the participants included in the conference call.
Contemporary conferencing platforms rely on manual user input, e.g., by dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) or keyed input supplied at a conferencing station, to invoke conferencing features or controls. Thus, a user at a rotary phone may not have any mechanism for activating a conference feature. Moreover, contemporary keyed input mechanisms are often cumbersome for participants to supply.
Therefore, what is needed is a mechanism that overcomes the described problems and limitations.